One of the most common mistake SEO beginners make, is thinking that if you rank well on Google, you immediately rank well in Yahoo or Bing. But that’s a big misconception. According to Align Digital Marketing on Web Local, most articles found on the internet about search engines are favoring Google, Yahoo or Bing. There are little to no articles about favoring all three search engines. Most search engine experts believe that it is essential to optimize not one, not two, but all three of them. If you only focus on one or two search engines, you will be missing a lot of potential consumers and great business opportunities on the search engine that you left out. Your best option is to optimize all popular search engines to cover all your bases.

Before we start, everyone should know that Bing and Yahoo have an understanding, so that means that, whatever rank you have with Bing, you will also get into Yahoo. It will make the work a lot easier because you will now optimize not three search engines, but two, Google and Yahoo/Bing. The goal of this article is to let the readers understand the similarities and difference between each search engine and the factors that affect the rankings of a site. We should also let people know the importance of optimizing your website for all popular search engines. 

Similarities between search engines

Links – Backlink profile quality is a big factor for both Google and Bing, so the most important thing to do is to have excellent and high-quality backlinks for your website.

Results for Local Search – Optimization and page content (whether video, image or plain text content) should be incorporated with your keywords that are based on your target market’s geographic location to get the maximum success in the local search.

Paid search – This factor works the same in every search engine, but you need to remember that this is not a permanent space for your website to work on. 

Differences between search engines

Yahoo/Bing and Google have both notable, but subtle differences when it comes to evaluating websites.

Keywords matching

Google: The algorithm used by Google recognizes context and synonyms around the keywords you use in your site. It will allow a lot of freedom as well as creativity with the content.

Bing: Contents need to use exact keywords for Bing to recognize and crawl the site.

Double-Meaning Search Queries

Google: In cases where the keywords have double meanings, the site that is more popular will be ranked first.

Bing: Double meaning searches when you are using Bing will provide local results first.

Page authority and domain age

Google: When it comes domain age, Google does not factor in as much as the backlink’s quality towards a domain. Not only that, Google prefers websites with .edu and .gov because they tend to have good contents and high-quality links.

Bing: Bing gives importance to the website based on the domain age when it comes to ranking. It also favors .edu and .gov websites.

Flash Content

Google: Websites that use Flash cannot be crawled or indexed by Google.

Bing: It can crawl, index and understand websites that use Flash, and sometimes it gives more credit to sites that use Flash

(Click here if you want to know more about Flash content.)

As you can see, Yahoo, Bing and Google play a vital role in Search Engine Optimization, and it is imperative to cover all your bases and optimize your website based on the three leading search engine’s specifications. Just because you are ranking well in Google, does not mean that you will also rank well in Bing or Yahoo, and vice versa. 

Mobile Optimization

Over a year ago, Google launched a mobile-friendly label in their mobile search results. The label put gray wording under the link and tells the user whether the website they are searching will work properly on mobile devices or not. In 2015, Google announced that ranking factors would be added to help mobile-friendly sites get higher ranking in mobile searches. It means, it is significant for site owners should be prepared for these changes. Yahoo has not taken such changes, but Bing has been slowly adding a Mobile-friendly label for their mobile search results.  Right now, it is still not clear whether or not Bing will be using ranking factor in their algorithm. Later that year Bing reveal some mobile-friendly techniques that may or may not be used in the future. But if you base it on trends, Mobile SEO may be the thing in the future for both Google, Bing and Yahoo.